In my previous post, I explained that you can option-click individual verses in a search result to mark them with a blue bookmark. Once you’ve marked some verses in this way, you can quickly navigate to those marked verses using the up and down navigation arrows labeled Mk. You can also collect all those marked verses in a separate tab to avoid having to wade past verses you’re not currently interested in.
In the example I’ve been using, I searched the ESV for the phrase “do not fear” and found results ranging from words of reassurance to a woman in childbirth to promises of deliverance from enemies to condemnations of those who do not fear God. Let’s say I want to focus on places where people are told not to fear because God is with them or on their side in some way. I quickly work my way through the results, option-clicking Exodus 20:20; Numbers 14:9; 21:34; Deuteronomy 1:21; 3:2; 20:3; 31:6, 8; Joshua 8:1; 10:8; Judges 6:23; 1 Kings 17:13; Isaiah 7:4; 8:12; Jeremiah 42:11; Lamentations 3:57; Matthew 1:20; and Revelation 2:10. Now that all of these verses are marked, I can separate them out from the unmarked verses by going to the Selection menu —> Add Marked Verses To —> New Reference List Tab. Doing so will open a special Reference List tab containing all of the verses I had marked.
The Reference List tab is basically just a container for collecting verses, and you can add or remove verses from it at any time. It has an area for writing a description of the verses it contains, and for this list I might write something like “Do not fear because God is with you.” I could then save this Reference List for future reference, use it as an element in another search, etc. For this blog post, I got the list of references in the previous paragraph by selecting all the verses in my reference list and going to the Edit menu —> Copy As —> References.
Reference Lists are a little known feature that has been around since Accordance 2.0. They’re useful any time you need a convenient way to collect a series of verses.